Traditional methods for treating certain injuries to a body (e.g., humans, animals) involve setting and immobilizing the injured member to allow natural healing of the injury. Often, it is desirable that natural healing will restore damaged structures to their original uninjured condition without-significant inconvenience to a patient. Traditional problems in injury treatments have been associated with the inability of the patient's body to heal correctly or rapidly and the inability of the healed part to regain full strength and freedom of movement. These problems are especially acute in patients with suboptimal health and reduced healing capacity such as the elderly, the bedridden, or patients with multiple disorders.
Attempts to address these problems and to promote more rapid healing have led to the use of pulsed electromagnetic fields. It is generally known that electromagnetic fields applied to a body can produce favorable biological effects. For example, FDA approved pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) apparatuses are available for use in bone healing. These apparatuses are used to augment and accelerate the natural healing process. PEMF is also effective in the treatment of severe injuries and fractures which are not otherwise treatable using conventional techniques.
Known methods and apparatuses which have been used to treat injuries using PEMF include the use of Helmholtz and toroidal coils to deliver PEMF. These methods and apparatuses have suffered from various deficiencies. For example, Helmholtz coils suffer from field inhomogeneity and field dropouts (e.g., the field drops to zero near the center of the coil). Toroidal coils are inefficient and have a relatively weak field strength. Further, known methods of PEMF treatment have problems associated with system complexity, large size and weight, long treatment times, weak PEMF strength and low efficiencies in promoting healing. Current devices and methods of PEMF treatment further fail to provide adequate mobility during treatment. Existing magnetic coil devices typically rely on spatial separation of the opposing sides of the coils to prevent detrimental interference of the magnetic fields. To achieve spatial separation, typically, a relatively thick and bulky core is implemented. A thick or bulky core can make it difficult to wrap or position the coil in certain treatment areas, for example, a patient's fingers. Other drawbacks also exist.